Conservatives sending Attawapiskat 22 modular homes

The federal government has acquiesced to community demands in Attawapiskat and will send 22 desperately needed modular homes to the community, as the Conservative government continued to face questions about its handling of the housing crisis.

An announcement Sunday of the airlifting of emergency supplies into the northern Ontario reserve on Saturday, including high-efficiency wood stoves, compost toilets and plastic sheeting, did little to squelch debate about how help was flowing to Attawapiskat.

The government came under attack during the Sunday morning talk shows, as Conservatives faced tough questions about whether they could prove claims of financial mismanagement.

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An outspoken NDP critic said Prime Minister Stephen Harper misled the country over how much funding has flowed into the troubled reserve.

“He didn’t give them $50,000,” Charlie Angus said on Global’s The West Block, referring to per-capita funding claims. “He took what was spent over a five-year period on a per-capita basis, didn’t tell the Canadian public that or the fact that what Attawapiskat gets on a per-capita basis is about half of what any other Canadian community (receives).”

The federal government says it has allocated $90-million to the reserve on James Bay since 2006, but claims financial mismanagement planted the seeds for the current housing problems.

The chairman of the House of Commons aboriginal affairs committee said on the program that audits of the community and the regional department should prove the government’s claims of financial bungling.

“We do have concerns and that’s exactly what the audit is going to find out,” Conservative MP Chris Warkentin said.

“The audit is going to find out why services that should have been given to every member of that community haven’t.”

Angus said funds had been properly spent and that the focus should be on housing people living in abysmal conditions.

“The community has said again and again, come in and audit our books . . . . I don’t think it gets any clearer than that,” Angus said.

The government said Sunday it will send 22 modular homes, meeting the community’s request. The government had said Friday it planned to send 15 homes to Attawapiskat, which the community said wasn’t enough. The government also said that Attawapiskat Chief Theresa Spence has accepted its offer to retrofit the community’s healing lodge, which the government has said could cost $500,000, to provide a temporary shelter.

The Conservatives have faced questions about its decision to appoint a manager to oversee the immediate needs of the community at a daily rate of $1,300.

The contract is scheduled to end June 30, meaning the total cost for the “third-party manager,” as the government calls it, is about $180,000, or $300,000 for a full year.

The money is coming out of federal funds provided to the reserve for governance and administration, Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan said on CTV’s Question Period, dismissing criticism that it was the band council and community paying the manager’s salary.

“The federal government’s paying for it,” Duncan said.

Duncan said in a release that Spence “acknowledged the necessity of working with” the third-party manager, but didn’t say if the band would work with that manager, which it has refused to do.

He went a step further on the CTV show, saying the community “is working with the third party manager” despite being told that Spence was denying that was the case.

Postmedia News could not immediately contact Spence to confirm her statements.

“She’s agreed to working with the third-party manager and that’s all we need,” Duncan said. “We just need collaboration and it makes things go that much more quickly.”